The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet (59 page)

What he had seen during the month, culminating in today’s fête, was a woman who had become free and independent, a woman who had asserted her own character and personality and who liked herself. A woman he had allowed to be free because he could never have lived out his life with one who was his merely by rights of possession.

It was a realization that terrified him. And he knew something would change tomorrow or very soon. Everything until now had been focused on the fête. After tonight there would be nothing to focus upon except the fragile, uncertain state of their marriage.

He opened the outdoor ball with his wife, dancing a vigorous country dance with her. He danced with three of his neighbors’ wives before leading her out again—for
a waltz beneath the stars. He could not say afterward that he had enjoyed it. It was too agonizingly sweet. They scarcely spoke. They did not once look into each other’s eyes. Tension and awareness rippled between them.

When it was over, he could no longer bear to smile and converse and continue to lead out the wives of his neighbors and tenants. He slipped away. It was not the thing to do, but he was beyond caring too deeply. It was late in the evening. The ball would play itself out, and people would begin to wander homeward. It was unlikely that he would even be missed.

He walked through the trees to the lake, always a favorite haunt of his when he wished to be alone. He never felt the healing power of nature as strongly as when he was at the lake. The moon was shining across it in a silver band tonight. There was hardly a ripple on the water.

He leaned his back against a tree, propped one foot against it, and folded his arms across his chest. He drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, and closed his eyes.

I
T WAS DIFFICULT
to see everyone in the darkness, despite the moon and stars and the colored lamps strung in the trees. At first she thought he must be somewhere beyond the range of the light available. But after she had danced two sets without once seeing him, she realized that he had left the dancing area. She asked the butler at the refreshment table, but it was only by chance that the village blacksmith, who was trying to cool himself with a glass of punch, overheard and mentioned seeing His Grace walk into the trees. He pointed to the spot.

He must have gone to the lake, she thought. But why? The evening was not over. He had appeared to be enjoying himself. But she knew why. She had felt the tension
between them like a physical thing as they had waltzed. She had been unable to look at him or speak to him—even though they had lived in the intimacy of marriage for a whole month. It had been the most wonderful dance of her life and the most dreadful.

He would want to be alone. Otherwise, he would not have gone off by himself without a word to anyone. She would be the last person he would want disturbing him. She must wait for him to return. Tomorrow they must talk. The time had come. But not tonight.

“Oh, will you please excuse me?” she asked, smiling warmly at their closest neighbor who had asked her to partner him in a quadrille. “There is something I must do.”

After that she could not just stand there or even mingle with those who did not dance. Mr. Macy would believe she had merely offered an excuse. She turned and crossed the lawn to the trees. After a moment’s hesitation she stepped along the dark path, having to feel her way from tree to tree. Very little light penetrated from the sky above. She hoped she was going the right way. She had been to the lake only once before and that had been in daylight with her husband as a guide.

And then she saw light—moonlight on the lake. She stopped for a moment when she reached the bank, her breath catching in her throat. Surely nothing on earth could be more beautiful.

“It
is
breathtaking, is it not?” he said quietly from somewhere to her right.

He was leaning back against a tree, she saw. He made no move to come toward her.

“You wished to be alone,” she said. A foolish thing to say. If she knew it, why had she not stayed away and respected his privacy? His head was back against the tree. She thought his eyes were closed, though she could not see him clearly.

“I have been dreaming an old dream,” he said.

“What?” she asked.

“I was a dreamer as a child,” he said. “I dreamed all sorts of impossible things. Ridiculous things, all involving adventure and personal freedom. Because I knew that the pattern of my life had been marked out for me from birth, I suppose. Part of the general rebellion that characterized my childhood. I grew to recognize and to accept reality and even to rather like it. But there was one dream that clung during my late boyhood and early manhood. It took longer to die than the others.”

He stopped talking, but she did not prompt him. She stood looking at him.

“I dreamed of living here,” he said. “You were right that first day, you see. I do love it. It is a part of my very being. But I dreamed of living here not just as the Duke of Bridgwater with responsibilities to the land and the people on it. I dreamed of living here as a man. With a woman. And children.”

She felt an ache in her chest and throat. She had never seen him so vulnerable. He had told her a great deal about himself during the past month. But she had sensed that he still kept the deepest part of himself locked away.

“I was still young enough,” he said, “to believe that somewhere out there was the woman who had been meant for me before either of us was even conceived. It was a lovely dream. But naive and sad too. It finally had to be abandoned.”

“Why?” she asked him. She had taken a few tentative steps toward him. “Do you no longer believe in love?”

He opened his eyes and smiled at her. But he said nothing.

“I think,” she said—and she had moved close enough to touch him though she did not do so—“that you are the most loving man I have ever known.” Her words took even her by surprise. But as she listened to the echo
of them, she knew that they were true. And she knew that the answer to all her questions had been staring her in the face ever since the day after her wedding, ever since that dreadful revelation in the carriage.

He chuckled without humor.

“My father’s favorite biblical text was the one about laying down one’s life for one’s friends,” she said. “You know? ‘Greater love hath no man than this’? You gave up everything for me the day after our wedding, Alistair.”

“I merely confessed to something I should have told you a month before,” he said. “And in so doing I made you miserable and myself miserable.”

“No.” She shook her head and spread her hands against his chest. She saw him flinch. “You gave me the gift of knowledge and freedom, Alistair. You have given the same gift continually every day since then. You have allowed me to get to know you and your home and your people. You have let me into your life. But you have put no restraints on me. You know, do you not, that tomorrow I may ask for the use of the carriage to take me and my belongings to Sindon Park, and that I may stay there indefinitely.”

“Don’t go,” he said. His head was back against the tree again. His eyes were closed again.

“But you will not stop me if I decide to go, will you?” she asked.

She heard him swallow. He did not answer for a long time. She waited.

“No,” he said at last.

“Why not?” She dipped her head and set her forehead against his chest between her hands.

“I will not hold you against your will,” he said.

“Why not?” Her eyes were closed very tightly.

“Because I would rather live without a dream than with a spoiled one,” he said. And more softly, “Because I love you.”

She was crying then. Just when she wanted to say something, she was crying instead. She felt his hand light against the back of her head, his fingers stroking through her hair. She felt him lean his head downward to kiss the top of her head.

“Don’t cry,” he said. “It is all right. Everything will be all right.”

“Alistair …” She looked up at him, all teary-eyed and wobbly-voiced. “It does not need to be a spoiled dream. I will live in it with you. You will never understand, perhaps, how wonderful it is to know that one may say no. How wonderful it is for a woman. For now I know beyond any doubt that I may say no to you, then I know too that I am free to say yes with all my heart.”

Both his arms had come tightly about her. He was rubbing his cheek against the top of her head.

“Because I love you,” she said.

She leaned against him in the long silence that followed and breathed in the familiar smell of him. This, she thought, utterly relaxed, utterly safe and secure, was happiness. This moment. She looked for no happily ever afters. She knew there would be none, that despite the beauty and essential reality of dreams, the real world could often be a harsh place in which to do one’s living. But this now, this moment, was happiness, and this moment would take them forward into a future they would create for themselves for as long as they both lived—with love.

“Alistair,” she said after a while, “I am very happy.”

He chuckled unexpectedly and tightened his arms about her. “Stephanie,” he said, “will you come somewhere with me?”

“Where?” She looked up at him. Even in the near darkness she could see the spark of mischief in his smile—the one she had seen very rarely in the two months of their acquaintance.

He took her hand firmly in his, but then abandoned it in order to set an arm about her waist. “You will find out,” he said.

She set her head against his shoulder and her own arm about his waist, and allowed him to lead the way.

H
E WAS LYING
naked on his back on the hay in the barn, at the farthest side of it from the door, where there would be plenty of warning in the unlikely event that they were interrupted. Stephanie was astride him, her thighs hugging his sides. She was kneeling upright, her head thrown back, her hair hanging loose down her back. The faint light from the small window above them gleamed in a bar across half her face and one naked shoulder and breast.

She was riding to the rhythm of his deep thrusts, and he could feel her open enjoyment despite her initial shock at the posture he had chosen for their loving so that it would be his back scratched by the hay, not hers.

She was looking down at him then, and her face fell into shadow. “Alistair,” she whispered. “Alistair.”

“My love,” he said.

He knew then why she had spoken his name and broken rhythm. Her body was tensing. With inner muscles she was clenching about him so that his thrusts met greater resistance.

“Don’t fight it,” he told her.

But she remained taut in every muscle as she threw back her head again and clasped his knees behind her. He held his rhythm, pushing into the tightness, coaxing her to move into the new world they could explore together for the remainder of a lifetime.

And then she cried out. The tautness remained for a few moments while he held still in her, and then she shuddered. He reached up to take her shoulders in his
hands, and he drew her down so that she was crouched over him, her head on his shoulder. He held her while the tension shuddered into gradual and total relaxation, and gave himself up to the release he had been holding back for her sake.

A long time of panting silence passed. “It is ungenteel,” she murmured at last.

He laughed softly. “Very definitely,” he said. “Quite unduchesslike. Far worse than bowling in a cricket match or running a three-legged race or dancing about a maypole. And naked in a hay barn, Stephanie. Tut!”

“Ah, but it was so wonderful,” she said.

“Very definitely,” he agreed. He turned carefully with her so that she lay beside him, his coat half beneath her. He had not disengaged from her. “Shall I tell you why I brought you here?”

“Because it is very wicked?” she said. She sounded sleepy.

“Very,” he said.
I lost my virginity here on a summer fête night many years ago
. He had been about to say the words aloud. He wanted her inside his soul, inside his secrets for the rest of his life. But perhaps, he thought just in time, there were some secrets best kept after all. “It is time I did something wicked. It was not enough to abandon our guests merely to take you to your bed, you see. Tonight you have earned a roll in the hay.” He chuckled.

“Alistair!”
She was wide awake now and bristling with indignation. “Are you suggesting …?”

“Mhm,” he said, his mouth against her hair. “Running three-legged races, cheering partially for one side in cricket, dancing about the maypole, looking lovelier than any duchess, or any
woman
for that matter, has any business looking—yes, you have deserved every roll you have been given or will be given tonight. I promise several more to come. Our guests may dance until they wish to go home. It is doubtful they will even miss us,
and if they do, they are welcome to allow their imaginations to run riot. You have liberated me, you see, Stephanie, and now you must take the consequences.”

She sighed and touched her tongue to his. “Oh,” she said.

“Mm,” he agreed.

She giggled suddenly, a sound he had not heard from her before. “Several more to come?” she said.
“Tonight?”
She pressed her hips closer to his. He knew she could feel him hardening inside her. “Is it possible, Alistair? I thought it could be done only once …”

“Let me prove how wrong you can be,” he said. “My love.” He drew one of her legs snugly over his hip and kissed her once more. “I am going to take you back to town soon. There is something I must buy you, and only a London designer could do it justice.”

“What?” she asked. She gasped. “Oh, it
is
possible. Oh, that feels
so
good.”

“A new bonnet,” he said. “Pink. With three plumes. Pink, purple, and … what color was the other one?”

“Fuchsia,” she said.

“Mm,” he said. “Oh, yes, love, very good indeed. It can be done more than once in a night, you see.”

“And a fuchsia cloak?” she asked.

“Mm,” he said. “My bright bird of paradise. How fortunate that your gray cloak was stolen. I might not have noticed you.”